When your bird base is finished the printed wing pattern will be on the inside.
Finish folding the crane normally.

Make sure you form the head on the correct side of the wings.

Before you form the head note which side is the “front” edge of the wing pattern.

The finished Crane

The finished crane.

Reverse fold the central body so it hides down inside the crane and glue it closed for a nicer effect.

This image shows two cranes I folded. The one on the left is the usual Crane. For the one on the right I reverse-folded the body down inside the crane and then used a bit of glue to glue it closed. I like the effect it creates.

If you enjoy folding this origami crane, donations are greatly appreciated.

A while back I was perusing this thread on papermodelers.com and got inspired to build another one of Johan Scherfts bird models. This is one of his earlier kits and I wasn’t super happy with the results, but it’s okay. I made a stand for it from a piece of branch and a piece of wood I had in the shop. I also bought Johan’s latest book, Beautiful Paper Birds.

I’m looking forward to making those.

Papercraft bird from a kit by Johan Scherft

More recently a post on OrigamiSpirit.com got me browsing the work of Cristian Marianciuc. The things he’s done with simple origami cranes are brilliant. I had to try some of his ideas myself and made these two cranes. I did each wing slightly differently to experiment. I plan on creating a downloadable pattern that I’ll post here when it’s ready.

I’ve still not been doing much in the papercraft world other than some occasional origami, but lately I’ve been trying to finish off a few projects I’ve had in the works for far too long. While working on one of those projects I ran across this little item I did a number of years ago.

Composed of 132 individual layers

I saw something similar on a website and had to try it myself. I started with a 3D model of a head that I found on the internet and sliced it into layers in my favourite 3D editor (Metasequoia). After arranging and numbering the layers I printed them on cardstock, then cut them out and stacked them up.

Edit: On a whim I enlarged the pattern for printing on (or laminating to) 1mm stock, which should result in a figure about 13 cm tall. The tiny one is a challenge, but if you would like to try the larger size here it is: SculptedHead-Large.pdf

I’m a little amazed it’s been over a year since I last posted anything. I’ve been fiddling with things here and there but not doing a great deal in the paper craft world. One thing I’m particularly proud of is this origami orchid display I made for a friend. She loved it!

Origami Orchid

I ran across an image of the finished flower on the internet somewhere and that led me to this video tutorial on youtube. It took a couple practice runs but it’s a fairly easy flower to fold and the results are great. I made the stem from two or three pieces of floral wire twisted together for extra thickness, then wrapped in green floral tape. There’s a loop of wire at the base and a small heavy stone holding it in place in the origami vase I found at origami-instructions.com.

A couple recent requests for the Celestra from Battlestar Galactica have gotten me motivated to get that project finished up. The original release of this model was on the forum at zealot.com. Through a couple hosting changes and misadventures the files for the small version of the Celestra were lost. I have cleaned up the unfold and made a few revisions and created both lined and unlined versions of the model. The original large version of the model is also included. The assembly instructions are simple, consisting of a set of images indicating part numbers and the general assembly sequence.

If you build it I’d love to have a picture of the finished project to use on the download page.

Recently I was asked by the Cranbrook and District Arts Council if I would lead an Introduction to Origami workshop. Since then I’ve been putting together a plan and folding like crazy testing things out. Naturally, along the way I’ve been running across dozens of great models I want to fold. The gallery below shows some of the models we’ll be doing in the workshop, along with a few I just had to do while I was digging around looking for material.

The butterfly from GoOrigami.com is very easy to fold but looks great, and will be used to introduce the waterbomb base. The piano and star box are traditional models that we’ll be doing in the workshop to illustrate basic concepts and practice squash folds. The traditional crane will be the ultimate goal of the workshop. If time permits we’ll do the samurai helmet and fish, and others.

Flowers are always a great item to fold, making nice gifts, and offering limitless options for presentation and display. The lotus flower below was in the instructions included in a package of origami paper that was given to me. Also pictured are the traditional lily, the Primula by Mitsonubu Sonobe (diagrams found at happyfolding.com), a five-pointed variation of the traditional lily created by John Montroll, and the Zhoubi bowl by Philip Chapman-Bell. The available links I could find for the Zhoubi bowl diagrams were all broken, so I emailed Philip and he replied with a new link to the diagram. They are released under a Creative Commons license so I’ve taken the liberty of hosting a copy here.

Enjoy!

A simple but lovely butterfly from goorigami.com

Piano, Samurai Helmut and Star Bowl

Traditional fish based on the Samurai Helmut

Traditional Crane

Lotus flower

Primula by Mitsonubu Sonobe

Traditional Lily

Five-pointed Lily

Created by Philip Chapman-Bell this stylish bowl is fairly easy to fold.

Just added to the Battlestar Galactica page is the Snowram version of Revell-Fan’s Landram. Along with the new version comes an optional luggage rack, and enhanced headlights that can be used on any of the Landram versions. The enhanced headlights are intended to be glued over top of the original lights so you could even apply them to a model you have already built.

Our good friend Revell-Fan has kindly provided me with this excellent model of the blaster from the mini-series “V” to fill the void in the weapons category here at StevesPaper. I’ve also got a weapon project in the works that I hope to post soon. I didn’t think of it earlier, but also in the weapons category is Revell-Fan’s amazing model of the Colonial Blaster, part of the Colonial Warrior’s Survival Pack. Check them out, download them, build them, and send me some photos. I’d love to add some pictures of other peoples builds to the site.

I just finished this great Christmas decoration from Julius Perdana over at Paper-Replika.com. The Santa bi-plane is a nicely detailed kit, but as released it’s quite large. I intended to use it as a tree ornament so I printed it at two-pages per sheet so it’s half size. The finished (half-size) model has a wing span of about 14 cm. (a little under 6 in.), and at this size some of the parts were pretty small. I wouldn’t recommend making it any smaller. If you want a nice decoration for next year keep this model in mind.